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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27676391">flesh parts to a knife's introduction</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily'>arbitrarily</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Collateral (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Enemies With Benefits, F/M, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:21:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,161</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27676391</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bad decision-making, a year in three acts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kip Glaspie/Sam Spence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>flesh parts to a knife's introduction</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from Rebecca Hazelton's "Self-Portrait as Postscript."</p><p>Is this nearly 10k of absolute filth? It's more likely than you think! I lay this entirely and wholly at the feet of <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge">thefudge</a> for reminding me of a) this series, and b) these two. Thank you for the reminder; this was an absolute unhinged blast to write.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em> <span class="small">January.</span> </em>
</p><p class="p1">The water has begun to steam in the tub when she hears it. Her hand stills on the hot water tap, waiting. The doorbell downstairs chimes again. She shuts the water off, but she does not move any further. She stays hunched uncomfortably over the edge of the tub, debating with herself, and then the knocking starts.</p><p class="p1">Kip groans. She tightens the sash of her robe and gingerly makes her way down the stairs, the muscle along her inner right thigh twinging with each step. The knocking has not ceased, persistent and determined, refusing to take no for an answer. Kip throws the door open, any immediate comment lost in her surprise.</p><p class="p1">“What the hell are you doing here?”</p><p class="p1">Sam Spence looks just as bewildered and put-out as she does. “Might I come in? It’s fucking freezing out here.”</p><p class="p1">Kip ignores him, as well as the chilly sleet driving down. His hair is already wet with it, the shoulders of his coat dotted with it, his nose and his cheeks as red as his hair. She pulls her robe that much tighter about herself, still staring at him. It’s much like the sudden influx of evidence early in a case—that wild desperation to slot disparate pieces together, a blind attempt to make any sense of a scene.</p><p class="p1">“Is it work?” she finally asks.</p><p class="p1">“For the love of god,” he says, no longer waiting for an invitation. He pushes past her into her own home. He smells like cold and wet wool and overpriced aftershave. Like every other Eton or Cambridge grad who has similarly pushed past her, both figurative and literal.</p><p class="p1">Too often what Kip does, day-to-day, feels like little more than ceding more ground. The moral high ground—it’s crumbling beneath her feet. Maybe it has been, for a good while, and she’s only now acknowledging where she stands. Too often, she thinks of that room. The report of the gun, Sandrine on the bed, her blood painting the wall behind her. It’s been three years and Kip has seen far worse since, but it’s still that—the door, opening it, knowing full-well what was waiting on the other side—which has stuck with her. She stores it as a mistake, hers alone, to be kept inside herself. A failure. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop feeling sore about it and she doesn’t think the world she knows, the one she wants, won’t stop breaking away from her, piece by piece.</p><p class="p1">She likes to joke to Bilk it’s only a matter of time before she makes her next career leap. Pole vaulter to teacher to police. “What’s that leave you with next?” Nathan said, the last time she mentioned it. “Spy?” Kip had laughed, but she disliked how it struck a very ugly place where she sometimes lived.</p><p class="p1">Three years, and in that time she still sometimes thought of him. Sam Spence. Of course she did. But it wasn’t besting him that she thought about, and it wasn’t the way he was willing to sell out his associates as if instead of a losing hand of playing cards he had gambled on they were merely paper dolls—inconsequential, without weight, to be shredded and torn at will. No, what she thought of when she thought of him was that he was the sort of man who drove the engine of not only this country but the world. It wasn’t right. When she thought of him, her thoughts turned hot-blooded and mean.</p><p class="p1">“Take your shoes off,” she says to him now. “I don’t need you tracking that muck around.”</p><p class="p1">She regrets not grabbing at least a pair of socks upstairs. The wood floors are cold under her bare feet. She follows him into her house, his shoes left in the front hall. Toys are still scattered about in the main room, and for but a moment that feels somewhat unfortunate, like the death of the ego, she allows herself to see both her home and herself through Sam’s eyes. It’s tragic. She stops.</p><p class="p1">Kip steps around him. She goes over to the freezer in the kitchen. She takes out a bag of peas. Without a word, she carefully drops down into the easy chair that was once her husband’s and slaps the bag onto her upper thigh.</p><p class="p1">Sam turns around to face her, still in his wet coat. His attention moves from the framed photograph of her mother mounted on the wall to Kip sprawled in the chair. She’s suddenly, painfully, aware she is only wearing her bathrobe, thin cotton in a dull heather grey, and nothing else. </p><p class="p1">“I see your hostess skills are near on par with your police work.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, please. The bar’s over there, behind the sofa, if you want something. Gin, mainly. Might be a bottle of whisky left from last Christmas.”</p><p class="p1">Amusement shifts his face into something interesting though hardly friendly. He drapes both his coat and his suit jacket over the side of her sofa. “No peas for me?”</p><p class="p1">“Only if you beg nicely.”</p><p class="p1">Kip tries to get herself comfortable while also trying not to inadvertently flash MI5 poking around at her drinks station, or what passes for one. She watches him sniff and examine the lone bottle of whisky that was indeed waiting over there. He pours two glasses, generously full. He brings hers over to her.</p><p class="p1">“Is this meant to be some sort of object lesson in manners and etiquette?”</p><p class="p1">“If you’d like it to be.” Sam takes a seat down on the sofa across from her. He leans back, his legs crossed at the ankle, and takes a healthy swig. She sips at hers.</p><p class="p1">Kip narrows her eyes as she considers him. “You’re not here in a professional capacity, are you? I’m not going to find myself blindfolded and hauled off to some black site for furthering questioning and possible torture, am I?”</p><p class="p1">“Your imagination runs decidedly dark. And, no.” His clipped tone conveys he has no interest in explaining himself to her. Before she can ask further, he nods towards her. “What’s with the leg?”</p><p class="p1">She snorts, indelicate. “I made an unfortunate error in judgment. Suspect gave chase and I, overly enthusiastic in my assessment of my physical fitness, followed. On foot. I didn’t do too bad for myself either, until I hit the ice.”</p><p class="p1">He is looking at her like he can’t decide if she’s fucking with him or not. She finds she rather likes that. She was telling the truth, for whatever that’s worth. She went down hard, but then, she’s used to going down hard. Of all things, it’s this injury that makes her miss the old days more than she has in ages. Back when there was a trainer and the PT and the masseur on hand to wring out her aches and pains, get her right as rain in as little time as possible. Now, it’s just her and some epsom salts and a bag of frozen peas.</p><p class="p1">“You wild woman,” he says drily.</p><p class="p1">“I have my moments.”</p><p class="p1">“I was sorry to hear about the divorce,” he says. His face says he’s anything but.</p><p class="p1">He’s caught her more than slightly off-guard. The divorce happened quickly, much like an avalanche, nearly a year ago. The condolences on the failed marriage from friends and family dried up some time as autumn approached. It’s not the idea of his sympathy, clearly feigned as it is, that unnerves her. It’s that he even knew.</p><p class="p1">“Are you telling me you’ve been abusing government resources to keep tabs on me?” She cocks her head. He says nothing. “Aw, don’t tell me I’m the one who got away, Sam.”</p><p class="p1">Sam’s mouth twists, ugly. It’s then that Kip is certain. It’s wrong to have him here in her home—he doesn’t fit. The Tate was appropriate for him, or a car park, shadowed and full of dark sedans. He does not belong anywhere warm, and least of all hers.</p><p class="p1">“You flatter yourself,” he says.</p><p class="p1">“Which isn’t to say it isn’t true.” Kip readjusts the cold bag against her thigh.</p><p class="p1">“I might’ve known though.” His right eyebrow arches and lifts as he speaks. “Women like you don’t stay married for long.”</p><p class="p1">“‘Women like me?’” Kip repeats, incredulous. “God, Sam. With tact like that I’m hard-pressed to wonder why you'd find yourself all alone and with nothing to do on a Friday night.” She shifts in the chair, trying to get more comfortable. Her robe flaps open about her knees; his gaze cuts to pale bared flesh and then back up to her face. She presses her knees together in a belated bid for modesty, her right hamstring protesting. “You don’t know what kind of woman I am,” she adds, quieter now, acid laced through the softness of her voice like a subtle poison.</p><p class="p1">“Don’t I? You scarcely make for that rare a specimen, Kip. Women like you, a dime a dozen in any major city. Works too hard, calls that a personality. Puts that work before all else, including the husband who will walk. Tired, and because she’s tired, she lets the rope go slack with all intimacies and then has the nerve to be shocked to find them gone. Determined and stubborn to the point of stupidity—”</p><p class="p1">“I resent that. I might be many things, but I’m not stupid. We both know that.”</p><p class="p1">“—and so unwilling to change her ways that she finds herself spending her nights, how’d you put it? All alone and with nothing to do.”</p><p class="p1">“Not so much unlike yourself then, yeah?” The wry curl of her words matches the upward tilt of her mouth.</p><p class="p1">Sam reclines back, almost comfortable. “You know, they told me I should try to recruit you. Back then, after everything.”</p><p class="p1">“What?” That is genuinely unexpected.</p><p class="p1">“They thought you were clever. Hell, I thought you were clever and I more than hated you for it. Better to have you inside the tent and pissing out than outside and pissing in, that was their thought. I dissuaded them of that plan.”</p><p class="p1">“How’d you do that?”</p><p class="p1">“I told them the truth. You’re an idealist. Your lot makes for poor recruits. More trouble than you’re worth, in the end.”</p><p class="p1">Kip’s mouth slides into a quick slash of a grin. “So much for that alternative career path for me then, I suppose.”</p><p class="p1">She catches the tic at the corner of his jaw. His mouth is clenched tight, as if he is grinding his teeth.</p><p class="p1">“You fucked me good there, and for a long while after,” he says. The coarseness sounds glaringly wrong in his posh mouth, but maybe that’s the appeal because Kip grins again.</p><p class="p1">“I didn’t do anything, Sam.” Her grin fades just as fast as it arrived. She resists the urge to grind her own teeth. “That’s what everyone does though, you know? They blame me when all I’ve done is come collect consequence that’s long been due. I didn’t make your situation. I just asked you pay for it.”</p><p class="p1">He scoffs. “So fucking self-righteous. I’m glad to see you haven’t changed in the slightest.”</p><p class="p1">“Why’s that? Is that what you came by for? Are you in want of emotional domination? A psychological dominatrix? Don’t tell me, you want somebody to whip your moral compass pointed back in the right direction. Make you feel bad about yourself, just a little.”</p><p class="p1">Sam’s eyes drift back down to her bared knees, to her hand and the no-longer-frozen bag of peas set on her upper thigh.</p><p class="p1">“Yes, Kip. Haul out your leathers.”</p><p class="p1">She laughs softly. It’s always been easy for her, to slide from good humor to chilly gravity. She does it now. “I don’t think you’re capable of feeling bad about yourself. Not really.”</p><p class="p1">“I came to you, didn’t I?”</p><p class="p1">“You interrupted my night. That’s got to give you some pleasure. Hardly selfless or self-flagellating.”</p><p class="p1">Sam abruptly gets to his feet. His glass is empty. He crosses the room and stands over her. He looks pointedly at the glass in her hand. She raises it to her mouth and takes a deliberate and slow sip from it, eye contact never wavering. He plucks it from her hand, his fingers still chilled over her own cold fingers, and takes it from her, even with the whisky still sloshing in the bottom of the glass. He refills them both without comment, returning her drink to her with something all too sharp and assessing glinting in his eye.</p><p class="p1">“Thank you,” she says, each syllable expressing anything but gratitude. The whisky warms her throat as she drinks, spreads down into her chest. Sam has resumed his seat on the sofa, his posture lazy now, legs spread out in front of him.</p><p class="p1">“What are you even doing here, Sam?” She finally gives in, asks the obvious question.</p><p class="p1">“You thought you were well shot of me?” He traces the rim of his glass with his thumb. He has long, slender fingers and they cup the glass nicely. “It’s funny. You think you know yourself, and then.” He shakes his head, he takes a drink, he looks back at her. “I suppose you could say I found myself with a crisis of conscience. Don’t look so doubtful.” He sighs. He raises his glass, but he doesn’t drink. “And I found myself, improbably, impossibly, thinking of you. Of all people. Your smug face was right there, in my head, stalking around my imagination, right along with your voice. I kept hearing you say, ‘I told you so.’”</p><p class="p1">“I never said that to you.”</p><p class="p1">“You might as well have.”</p><p class="p1">“So you wanted to come by, see this face in the flesh?”</p><p class="p1">He doesn’t answer her. He doesn’t tell her what happened, not that she expected he would.</p><p class="p1">“Do you want to hear me say, ‘I told you so’? I’m rather good at it.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m sure you think you are.”</p><p class="p1">Kip’s mouth softens. She can feel the corners pull, against her will. “I told you so,” she says.</p><p class="p1">The tension between them, always present, adversarial and antagonistic, has taken on a new dimension. It’s nearly palpable now. Tight and strained, same as a pulled muscle, in need of relief. There is a sudden glimmer, at the edge of her consciousness. A brief glimpse of knowledge, a forethought: they’re going to fuck.</p><p class="p1">Kip sets her glass down on the end table next to the chair. She gets herself up to standing, not without a bit of clumsy effort.</p><p class="p1">“I’m not going to fuck you.”</p><p class="p1">Sam’s eyebrow lifts yet again; a tell, she thinks. “Again with the hospitality.”</p><p class="p1">“I am very tired and very sore and I had one plan for this evening and that was to rest in the very fine and rarely used bathtub I have upstairs. You’re welcome to follow me.”</p><p class="p1">The look of absolute bafflement on his face is reward enough. He does follow her. She doesn’t have to turn around to check. She steps into the hall and climbs the stairs. She imagines he can be stealthier than he is behaving now: even in his socks, each footfall behind her is audible, felt by her. He wants her to know, she thinks. Another game for them to play.</p><p class="p1">She left a candle burning in the bathroom, lit when she thought she had the night to herself. It was a cheap gift, a Christmas party she dragged herself to last month where most everyone knew her as “the ex-wife.” As it burns, it offers little to no scent. It does, however, throw enough light in the small space that she doesn’t bother flipping the light switch. Partially a mistake; she recognizes it after Sam follows her in. It makes the room that much more intimate than it has any right to be.</p><p class="p1">Her bathroom is mostly neat, no frills, much like the rest of the house. There’s the face wash and the dental floss left out on the sink from this morning, nothing all that revealing or embarrassing other than her bra and panties still on the tile floor from where she dropped them nearly an hour ago. She kicks them aside.</p><p class="p1">Kip can feel him hovering at her back as she leans over. The tub begins to fill again, the thunderous sound of running water drowning out anything else, including her better judgment. Sam closed the door behind him, a fact both horrifying and interesting in its implications. Steam rises, begins to cloud the corners of the mirror with condensation.</p><p class="p1">It’s the mirror she is looking at and not him when she drops her robe. She doesn’t want to see him looking at her body—she’s never been particularly self-conscious nor has she ever really given her body more merit than serving as the vehicle to get her through life, but she is curious if the bruise along her hip and the side of her ass from her fall earlier has colored an even deeper, uglier purple-black. She wonders what he might think of that; she doesn’t want to know. She makes the mistake though, the further mistake, of clocking the refection of his face, behind her, in the mirror. There he is, his eyes tracking over her, lingering oddest of all on first her neck and then her face in profile.</p><p class="p1">She carefully lowers herself into the tub. She winces as she settles beneath the water. No bubbles—she can see straight through the water, her body laid out and visible. He can see. Her nipples rest at the water’s edge, puckered against the contrast of the hot water and the cooler air—not because he’s looking at her.</p><p class="p1">Sam takes a seat on the closed toilet lid. He brought both his glass and the bottle up with him. His eyes don’t move from her as he drinks.</p><p class="p1">“Is that better?” he asks. She thinks that even if he were to say the kindest words a person could muster—<em>I love you</em>, she supposes—coming from him they would still sound snide and self-satisfied.</p><p class="p1">“Mmmm,” is all she says though, her lips pressed together. It is nice, but not better. The hot water makes her blood feel as if it’s boiling, restless beneath her skin, but she doesn’t tell him that. Instead she finds herself telling him about the ice baths she endured during training. A fucking misery, but also, at times, very nearly pleasant.</p><p class="p1">“You miss it,” he says. Not a question, more like an accusation. Kip shrugs, makes the water ripple around her.</p><p class="p1">“It’s so tied up in youth it’s possible that’s what I really miss.” Even as she says it, she knows she’s lying. Of course she misses it. That sense of purpose, distilled down to one single thing, the sense not just of accomplishment but victory—all that’s muddied and absent now. She snorts. “Fuck it. Yeah, I miss it.”</p><p class="p1">Maybe it’s her own willingness to embrace honesty that makes him say what he does next. He’s hunched over, his legs open, his glass of her whiskey held between as he sighs. “It’s fucking wrecking me, you know. The job. I can’t fucking believe after all this time, I could succumb to something so stupid as—” He stops abruptly. She thinks he was going to say guilt. So, Sam Spence has grown a conscience after all. Kip rolls her eyes.</p><p class="p1">“My god, you’d make me your priest, wouldn’t you?”</p><p class="p1">He lifts his head. “And what? Have you bugger me?”</p><p class="p1">Kip almost laughs. “No. Take your confession.”</p><p class="p1">He lifts one eyebrow. Sardonic, more than a little dirty. “Mine was better.”</p><p class="p1">“Is that what you like?” she asks, perfectly casual. Her skin prickles and she blames the rapidly cooling water.</p><p class="p1">Sam doesn’t answer her. Even in the low light, she can tell: he’s hard. The narrow lines of his trousers along his thigh, the spread of his legs—neither hides much of anything. She’d like to ruin him, she thinks. That’s something new for her. She never sought out destruction when it came to sex or men, but the appeal is enough to make something clench low in her belly.</p><p class="p1">“You can touch yourself, if you want.” She hears herself say it, as if from a long distance, her face warm but not with shame.</p><p class="p1">That look of genuine surprise crests over his face again. “I thought you said—”</p><p class="p1">“I said I wouldn’t fuck you. You’re more than welcome to fuck yourself.”</p><p class="p1">He’s sitting up straight now. He’s set his glass on the floor. “And what are you going to do?”</p><p class="p1">“I thought that much was obvious. I’ll watch.”</p><p class="p1">His mouth twitches. “Who would have guessed? Kip Glaspie, kinkier than your average schoolmarm.”</p><p class="p1">“Are you going to take your cock out or not?”</p><p class="p1">Sam swallows, hard. She watches his throat bob. She briefly thinks about what that would feel like under the open width of her hand. And then, she stops thinking. She watches as he presses the heel of his palm against himself before his hands move to his belt. He’s breathing rough already.</p><p class="p1">She watches as he pulls his cock out of his boxer briefs, the waistband nestled under his balls. He doesn’t waste any time: he licks his palm and takes himself in hand. He’s still otherwise fully dressed—a slightly wrinkled dress shirt and trousers and he never did take off his tie, now tossed out of his way over his shoulder. His cock is pink, much like the rest of him, growing darker as he works himself. His cock is much like his fingers, she thinks, more length than girth. It curves in his hand; his thumb minds particular attention to the head, toying the slit. The curse of detective work, she knows, is that you catalog every observation and store for use later. That is exactly what she is doing now, as she watches him, her own breath going heavy, the temptation there to join him, slide her hand between her legs. She doesn’t do it.</p><p class="p1">“What’re you thinking about?”</p><p class="p1">“Jesus,” he huffs. “You want dirty talk in addition to a show?”</p><p class="p1">Kip doesn’t say anything. She doesn't want anything. Not from him—that’s the party line, at least. Instead, she lets her eyes sweep over him. There’s no urgency in his movements, he fists his cock lazily, with a patience she never would have expected from him.</p><p class="p1">He sucks in a deep breath between his teeth. He squeezes himself tighter. “Getting in that tub,” he says. “On top of you. Holding you down.”</p><p class="p1">Kip quirks an eyebrow. “You’d drown me? Now who’s kinky.” He’s braced his feet, clad in tastefully patterned trouser socks, against the tile floor. At the sound of her voice, his hips begin to rock into the haphazard rhythm of his hand. “You’d get all wet,” she continues. “Wreck your suit.” Sam makes a high noise trapped in his throat as if maybe that's what he wants. Interesting. She keeps pushing, like they might as well be sat in an interrogation room instead of her dimly lit bathroom. “You’d try to drown me and I’d choke you with your necktie.” Sam’s hand moves faster now, the sound bodily slick and loud. His eyes slant closed and he tips his head back, baring his throat to her.</p><p class="p1">“You’re easier than I thought you’d be,” she says softly. It’s a terrible thing, she knows, to tell a man like him, a man who prides himself on toughness, a necessary hardness, that he’s anything but. It’s high time someone taught him that inflexibility is not the same thing as strength.</p><p class="p1">His eyes flash open and settle on her face. Even with color high on his cheeks, his eyes are dark enough to render him dangerous. “You’ve thought of me?”</p><p class="p1">She meets his eye, refuses to feel as caught as he wants her to be. “I’m thinking now.”</p><p class="p1">He wets his lips with his tongue. “I like eating cunt.”</p><p class="p1">“What?”</p><p class="p1">‘You asked me. What I like.” He takes in a harsh breath. It shudders out of him as he speaks. “That’s what I like.”</p><p class="p1">Kip looks to his mouth despite herself. Thin-lipped, a flash of teeth as his mouth parts open, the pink swell of tongue behind.</p><p class="p1">“You can think about that,” he says, somehow managing to sound both proud and damning as he’s moments away from coming.</p><p class="p1">She scowls as he wipes his hand off on the towel set out by the sink.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">It’s simple enough to justify, after, when he gets her down on her bed. Or, she gets him. She’s still wet from the bath, barely even pausing to dry herself off before she stomps off to her bedroom—Sam quick to follow yet again. That, she thinks, even as she lays herself back on top of the bed, will be something to gloat about another day.</p><p class="p1">He doesn’t join her, not immediately. He stands there, beside the bed, his belt gone and his flies still undone, his cock tucked back into his boxers.</p><p class="p1">“What do you want?” She didn’t think he’d be the sort to ask. Assume, instead, take what he thought she’d like, not even let his care extend that far.</p><p class="p1">Naked, Kip kicks her right leg out. She ignores the pain; she’s good like that. “Make it feel better,” she says. She can’t decide if she’s kidding. She doesn’t think she is. She’s never been the sort to disguise intent with jokey window dressing.</p><p class="p1">For whatever it's worth, Sam takes her at her word. The mattress sinks under his weight. He settles on his knees beside her, bent over her. He hasn't touched her, not yet, but she can feel the heat of him. The promise, the threat, of his hands on her is nearly as good as actual physical satisfaction. It’s been a long time since she felt that way about anyone. It's thrilling.</p><p class="p1">“Kip,” he says.</p><p class="p1">“Go on then,” Kip says. When she swallows, her lips smack audibly. “I want you to,” she says.</p><p class="p1">Sam’s hand is hot against her thigh, tentative as his touch is. She feels him take in a deep breath, his chest nearly flush with her arm. His fingers span over her skin, the meat of his palm sweaty with heat. It’s her turn to breathe in deeply. It’s been months since someone, anyone, touched her. She tried it on for size, casual dating, casual sex, and found the entire enterprise wanting. But this—this is good, this is better, in a way she cannot bring herself to articulate. Personal and wrong, and she stops thinking, she loses the plot as Sam’s fingers dig in and work the back of her thigh. It hurts, and her next inhale arrives as a gasp. He lifts her leg slowly until her calf is balanced against his right shoulder, his left hand gripping tight around her ankle. He begins to knead the strained muscle. He doesn’t go easy on her, stronger, more insistent than she might have thought he would be. Enough to make a strangled noise catch in her throat. She doesn’t let herself think about how he has her pinned here, like some sort of rare specimen to be kept under glass. How open she is—her legs, spread for him. His hand climbs higher, along the lower swell of her ass, and she doesn’t tell him to stop.</p><p class="p1">She reaches for him instead.</p><p class="p1">This close, Sam’s less a man and more a collection of features to catalog. Pale eyelashes, the florid flush to his skin, speckled pink and mottled, his hair fine and soft under the pull of her fingers. He likes that—his eyes flutter and his mouth drops open when she tugs harder.</p><p class="p1">He pushes against her, her right knee bent, her hamstring nearly tested to its limit as he starts to fold in on her. With his other hand, he pushes at her ankle, keeps her legs open to him.</p><p class="p1">“Christ, you’re soaking.” She can barely move under him, but her back arches slightly, her hips trying to cant downward. Sam’s voice drops lower. She can feel his breath at her bare shoulder. Can nearly taste the whisky he drank. “I can see it. I can fucking smell it.” Kip gives in; she whines, low and needy, wordless. </p><p class="p1">His hand grips the curve of her ass now, pulling her apart. She can feel herself spread, her cunt exposed and open, and she clenches around nothing. Her fingers curl into the duvet cover. She’s wet enough she can feel herself dripping. Sam groans, low in his throat, his head bent, watching her. His hand drags around and up, to the bend where inner thigh meets hip, the tips of his fingers so close to where she wants him, because she does, she’s willing to admit to it now, even if only to herself.</p><p class="p1">“Sam,” she says very quietly. She will not look at his face. She is not begging. He chuckles, just as quietly.</p><p class="p1">“You can touch yourself, if you want.” There’s rich mockery in his voice, but it’s cut through with a frisson of actual hunger.</p><p class="p1">She’s sloppy wet, and they can both hear it as she sinks first one and then another finger into herself. Kip makes a breathless sound, as if this is the first time she’s ever touched herself. In a curious way, that is exactly how it feels. She’s never been watched, not with this level of scrutiny and bad intent. She works herself faster. The pain in her leg, the protesting muscle, is both distracting and grounding. It heightens the press of her fingers against and inside herself. It’s too much, and she rubs at her clit, empty, wanting more and too afraid to ask for it. The fingers of her left hand scrabble and grab at his wrist, his hand still rubbing at her thigh like she’s an animal that needs to be gentled, broken in. It’s like that she comes, silently, her fingernails nicking into the thin skin on the underside of his wrist.</p><p class="p1">Her pulse is still racing, she has her hand held over her eyes, when she says to him, “Get out.”</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2">
  <em> <span class="small">June.</span> </em>
</p><p class="p3">The date was a bust. It’s the last time. That’s what she told herself as she walked home and it was exactly what she told Naomi when she set this up. Naomi is one of the few friends Kip has kept from her past life, a teacher who has never once tried to talk Kip out of monumental, life-altering decisions, including both her career change to police and her filing for divorce. She makes up for these good qualities by providing Kip a menagerie of men worth neither time nor effort.</p><p class="p3">Kip arrives back home early, the sun not even set. She has the place to herself, her son with his father. She has yet to adjust to the strangeness of adapting family into something split by a shared calendar and court order. The thought does nothing for her, so she pushes it away. She takes out the garbage.</p><p class="p3">She’s along the side of the house, breaking down delivery boxes to be recycled, jamming them into the bin, when she hears the crunch of footsteps on gravel. She freezes and looks up. Sam Spence is backlit by a quickly fading orange sky as he approaches her.</p><p class="p3">“So this is what it’s come to for you? Picking up ladies in alleyways?”</p><p class="p3">“Hello, Kip.”</p><p class="p1">She tears viciously at the packing tape on the next box. She looks him over quickly, same as she would a suspect in the box. Identifying the pertinent information, the small bits to twist same as thumbscrews. Sam has the tired and disheveled look she normally associates with long travel. His shirtsleeves are rolled against the muggy summer heat, his collar open to bare the notch at his throat. He needs a shave.</p><p class="p1">“Are you just going to stand there and watch me?”</p><p class="p1">“You seem to have it well in hand.”</p><p class="p1">She knows exactly what he means to reference. She smirks. It’s been months since he last came by. That night exists for her as some sort of strange fever dream, something an overtired mind and an overactive imagination might’ve conjured. He never came by again, after, lending it that much more of a surreal quality. That is, until now.</p><p class="p1">She slams the lid of the bin down. Without further comment, she heads back inside. As expected, he follows. He watches her with that same condescending assessment he’s applied to her since they first met. Kip goes over to the kitchen sink and washes her hands.</p><p class="p1">“I see you’ve got that spring in your step back.”</p><p class="p1">She glances up at him, dries her hands off. She gives her right leg a wiggle. “Good as new.”</p><p class="p1">Sam cocks his head as he looks her up and down, as if just now fully noticing her. “Did they change the uniform for the job? Or, don’t tell me—Kip, were you on a date?”</p><p class="p1">Kip glances down at herself. She's still in the black sundress she wore to dinner, sleeveless and thin-strapped, leaving her to feel stupidly feminine in front of him. She presses her lips together, her lipstick long faded, and she doesn’t say anything.</p><p class="p1">“Must not’ve gone well, seeing as you’re home, oh, before nine o’clock.”</p><p class="p1">“Maybe I fucked him in the loo.”</p><p class="p1">And there it is: the brief lift of his eyebrow, that dark spark in his eye. Up close like this, she can see how truly exhausted he looks. “Now we both know you’re hardly the type.”</p><p class="p1">She meets his eye. Who’s she trying to fool? Of course she’s occasionally thought of him, since. Months passed without incident other than the jagged pull in a dark corner of her mind, an answering sweep low in her gut that felt a lot like desire. “Do you want something to drink, or should we just get to the point of why you’re here?”</p><p class="p1">The creases of his face smooth out as his mouth softens. “See, that’s what I like best about you, Kip. You never play coy.”</p><p class="p1">“Sam.”</p><p class="p1">“You know what I want. Take off that dress.”</p><p class="p1">Kip laughs.</p><p class="p1">“You think I’m kidding?”</p><p class="p1">She meets him where he stands. She’s close enough her bare toes nearly touch the tips of his shoes. The skirt of her dress brushes against his legs. “I think you’ll have to ask better than that.”</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2">She has him down on the sofa, her legs spread above his face. His stubble scratches at her thighs as she arranges herself over him. He turns his head, he bites at her thigh, and Kip draws in a tight breath.</p><p class="p2">He licks firmly against her only once before he pulls back. She can still feel his breath on her, it makes her want to close her legs, He groans deeply. “You taste good.”</p><p class="p2">“Shut up,” and then she gasps. He sucks her clit into his mouth—“<em>fuck,</em>” she spits out—immediate and too much. The muscles of her abdomen clench and her body curls forward as she says something else, slurred and pained. A name, maybe.</p><p class="p2">Sam is, unfortunately, very good at this. He eats her out with a desperate hunger that hits her hard. She can barely hold her body up; she can’t stop making noise as his lips and his tongue slick against her. He’s noisy too—not only the wet smack as his mouth works over her, into her, but low, pleased sounds caught thick in his throat, that vibrate against her. Kip whimpers.</p><p class="p2">He makes her come twice like that. The first time is quick but no less devastating, the sort of release that builds for months, nearly hurts as it breaks from you. The second time she comes with a hoarse shout, her fingers curled into the arm of the sofa, his digging tight into the bend of her hip.</p><p class="p2">Kips thighs tremble as she drags herself back from him. She regrets looking at his face—he’s wet with her, down to his chin. He’s breathing hard, his chest rising and falling under her splayed legs, her weight slumped against the back of the sofa. She glances over her shoulder, down the length of his body; his hips rise and roll restlessly against nothing.</p><p class="p2">Kip turns back to him.</p><p class="p2">“Are you going to come?” she asks, gentler than she intended. Sometimes, she knows, the knife cuts better coated in honey. “I bet I don’t even have to touch you. You like the taste of me that much, you could come just from that.” Sam squirms under her. He licks at his mouth, at the taste of her, his eyes dark and huge, fixed on her.</p><p class="p2">Kip takes pity, or she takes something else, and she reaches back. She palms him through his trousers. Sam twitches, both his cock and the rest of his body. She can feel the heat of him even through the fine wool. She can remember the heft and the length of him as he brought himself off, upstairs in her bathroom.</p><p class="p2">His hand settles on her, his grip cruelly tight around her forearm. His fingers dig in as she palms him with more purpose, more pressure. Sam’s eyes close, they flutter open, all of him pink and ripe, including his mouth. Still wet, with both spit and her. It makes her feel unspooled, reckless. She wants to climb back on top of him, wants to shove his pants down just far enough to ride him. She wants to kiss him.</p><p class="p2">He shifts under her, impatient. “Kip, come on.” She doesn’t move. She watches as his eyes drift over her—the plain black bra, her bared cunt and where it rests against his chest, his soft white shirt. She rubs herself against him, imagines leaving his shirt wet with her, wet as his face, his chin. That when he leaves, when he gets home, he’ll stink of her. She grinds her hand down harder against him. She leans over him.</p><p class="p2">“I’d say I’d let you fuck my mouth, but I don’t think you’re going to make it that long—do you?”</p><p class="p2">Sam makes a strangled, gasping noise, his body jostling her own, and sure enough, he’s coming.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2">
  <em> <span class="small">December.</span> </em>
</p><p class="p3">It, like most bad behavior, became a repeated pattern. A habit of sorts.</p><p class="p3">A fraction of the time passed between the last time and the next time. They spent the rest of that summer intermittently fucking each other with a competitive edge that often tipped over into too much. The first time she let him fuck her mouth, they were barely past the front door, the wood floor murder on her knees, her throat sore the next day in such a raw and used way she was almost disappointed he did’t come by that night for a repeat performance. Because that was the design of it: impromptu, unplanned, entirely at Sam’s whim. They did not call or text each other, they didn’t make plans. Days would pass and, suddenly, there he was. Back for more.</p><p class="p3">He often came to her after work had done his head in. He would offer one sentence of complaint and Kip would read the rest off the lines worn into his face, the ugly downturn to his mouth. He came to her, she had figured, when he had been made to feel the worst of himself. What she couldn’t figure was if she was meant to be punishment or pick-me-up for him.</p><p class="p3">“You could quit.” She told him that after he had fucked her with his fingers until she cried, wrung out, sweaty and near miserable with pleasure on top of sheets she definitely recalled buying with her husband. Ex-husband. Beside her, Sam panted, equally spent.</p><p class="p3">“No I fucking couldn’t,” he snapped, and that was the end of that conversation. They often spoke to each other this way now, in fits and starts, conversation abandoned to a more physical arena, resumed once breath was nearly caught.</p><p class="p3">Naomi continued to try to set Kip up with friends and friends of friends, always men she described as being “nice,” as if it was this attribute above all others Kip should seek out in a man. Kip had fought to keep her face blank, as she sat there across from Naomi, sipping at a watered-down happy hour gin and tonic. She was thinking about the first time Sam had fucked her. He had her bent over the arm of her sofa. He was brutal about it; she didn’t even realize she was making noise until he suddenly stopped moving. Her fingers clawed at the hand he had braced against the sofa, next to her face, and she curled her fingers with his as if trying to drag him along with her. She could hear herself the, terrible, heaving, near sobbing gasps that made her chest ache, held up not by her shaking legs but the arm Sam had slung around her middle.</p><p class="p3">“Are you alr—” he started to say.</p><p class="p3">“Don’t stop,” she managed to say. And after that, he didn’t. There was nothing nice about any of it, and that was precisely what Kip wanted. Naomi wouldn’t understand that. Naomi didn’t, when, after the combination of Kip, too many weak gin and tonics, and her own exhausted impatience at having the same conversation every two weeks, blurted out that there already was somebody, Naomi didn’t need to worry about her.</p><p class="p3">“You’re seeing someone?” Naomi said. Kip didn’t correct her, even though she didn’t think that was what they were doing. That implied a level of visibility, of interest, potential commitment to each other that she insisted to herself was staggeringly absent between her and Sam. She didn’t like him. Each time she saw him only solidified that opinion. He was arrogant and brash and he cared so little for anyone other than himself. He was not the sort of person she had any interest in earning any respect from, and he was highly unlikely to earn it from her. What Kip never could have predicted, and what she could not explain to Naomi, was the freedom to be found in that—willfully disliking someone so much nothing about them could touch you. Hurt you. He made, in that sense, for the perfect fuck. Or so she thought.</p><p class="p3">The last time Sam had come by they hadn’t fucked at all. Kip came home late, knackered, to find him waiting on her front stoop, a bag of takeaway Thai in his hands. It was late November and the night was chilly and damp.</p><p class="p3">He gestured to the brown bag. “It’s cold,” he said, darkly accusatory.</p><p class="p3">“Well. Thank god I have a fully-functional, if not often used, kitchen then, hm?” The first time he had done this, brought her food as if he thought her in need of feeding, she nearly threw him out. There was a domesticity to that curry he brought her that was completely intolerable. But the takeaway was delicious, as was the hour he spent with his face between her legs. Sam Spence, not entirely useless.</p><p class="p3">But last time. She had passed out on her sofa shortly after eating and woke in the small hours, well before dawn, to find he had stayed the night. He was asleep on the sofa beside her, warm and familiar, her weight pressed entirely against him. It was acutely horrifying; for days after she couldn’t decide who she hated more—him or herself.</p><p class="p3">Which is all the long way around to say, she’s surprised he’s come back so soon.</p><p class="p1">“Well. Look what the cat dragged in.”</p><p class="p1">Kip stands in the doorway, her arms crossed. The garland she half-heartedly threw up around the door has begun to list downward, crooked, tangled in a string of lights.</p><p class="p1">Sam has the collar of his coat up around his chin. He starts to pull his gloves off. “Are you going to make a production out of it, or are you going to let me in?”</p><p class="p1">Kip purses her lips. She holds the door open wider and steps back. “I just got the little one down, so.” She holds up a finger to her mouth.</p><p class="p1">A brief frown sketches over his face, not out of discontent but rather the unexpected. Somehow, they have managed to arrange all their interludes when her home was empty.</p><p class="p1">As Kip steps into the kitchen, she tries to shove away any thought that leans towards the domestic. She ruins it by what she says next. “If you’re hungry, there’s some leftover macaroni on the stove, the dregs of that bottle of cab.”</p><p class="p1">Sam looks as if he is on the point of making some droll wisecrack about her housekeeping but considers better of it. Cock wins out yet again, she thinks.</p><p class="p1">He picks up the bottle, hefts its weight, and then takes a pull straight from it. He shrugged off his coat somewhere between the door and her kitchen. His tie is undone and he looks rough in that way posh men like him achieve where it still manages to look like they’ve yet to do an actual day’s labor.</p><p class="p1">She leans her hip against the counter, body half-turned to face him. “So? What's it this time?”</p><p class="p1">A ghost of a smile graces his lips. “The problem with you, Kip Glaspie, is that you like to assume the worst of every single person.”</p><p class="p1">“That is not my problem.”</p><p class="p1">“Maybe I came by because I like you.” He says it like he’s mid-tooth extraction, like he feels the exact opposite towards her.</p><p class="p1">She snorts. “No. You don’t.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know.” Her antagonism his humor; he seems lighter, somehow. “I like people who are useful to me.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, baby, with talk like that,” she says wryly. “No telling what I might do.”</p><p class="p1">“There is very little you haven’t already done. Not with me.”</p><p class="p1">Kip blushes, despite herself. The thing is, he isn’t wrong. They’ve worked hard to break both themselves and each other in ways most people design for love. Sometimes, she thinks it’s not himself he’s trying to punish, but rather her. Make her a party to this, a part of it, with him. Force her to admit that she wants this just as much as he does, that she likes it. As if he thinks in black and white, that there’s something for him to be gained and something to be lost for her, and isn’t that calculation how it always works with men like him: a zero-sum game. And yet, here she is. Still playing.</p><p class="p1">Sam sets the bottle down. He wipes at his bottom lip with his thumb. “Maybe I just wanted to see you.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, fuck off with that.” Kip turns around. She starts running the water in the sink to do the washing up.</p><p class="p1">She feels him approach from behind. Her pulse has already kicked up. She knows exactly what is going to happen between them. They’ll fuck. She’ll enjoy it more than she’ll ever care to admit, but she won’t need to admit it—he’ll already know.</p><p class="p1">Sam crowds her against the sink. His hips push against her ass and his hands settle firmly onto her own hips. She wriggles out of his grip and turns around.</p><p class="p1">“No. We’re not doing this here.”</p><p class="p1">“What?” His mouth curves down, petulant. Abjectly disappointed, and isn’t that something.</p><p class="p1">As if in response to that, and only that, Kip lunges forward. She catches his bottom lip between her teeth and tugs, her bite deliberate and harsh. His whole body twitches. He grabs at her again.</p><p class="p1">“I’m tired,” she says. She kisses him, not quite as apology for his bottom lip and not quite chaste. Sam threads a hand through her hair and kisses her back, the palm of his hand cradling the back of her skull. He kisses eagerly, and Kip immediately understands why they never did this before: it’s miserably intimate. She pulls back, his fingers still snarled in her hair.</p><p class="p1">“I have a bed,” she says.</p><p class="p1">He lifts an eyebrow, amused. “You’re going to lie back, think of England, and make me do all the work?”</p><p class="p1">She rolls her eyes. “Should’ve known you to be a lazy fuck.”</p><p class="p1">Sam slips his hand down the back of her sweatpants to grab at first her ass and then between her legs. Kip’s hips push forward and her back bows. “And what about me gives you cause to call me lazy?”</p><p class="p1">“Your general entitled demeanor?”</p><p class="p1">“How many times does a man have to make you come before you give him a little credit?” His mouth is close enough his lips threaten to brush against her own with each word he speaks. Greedy restlessness trips up her spine.</p><p class="p1">Kip drags her teeth over his jawline. “More than you’ve managed,” she breathes against his reddening skin.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2">They don’t often make it to her bedroom. Each time they do, she catches him behaving as she might: clocking every detail worth remembering about it. As if he is learning her through the baby monitor set on the nightstand, the collection of sweaters draped over the chair in the corner of the room, the books left beside the bed, the photographs deemed worthy of framing. Implying, she thinks, that he wants to know her. No—she refuses to think about that.</p><p class="p2">Instead, they stand on either side of the bed and undress with a grim determination that would better serve a boxing match. No tenderness; Kip doesn’t want it, even as the first thing Sam does to her is draw her across the bed to him and kiss her. It’s a mean kiss at least, more than a hint of teeth, his tongue invading her mouth. He makes a noise like she struck him when she sucks on it, his cock slippery along the crease of her thigh as he ruts against her.</p><p class="p2">Flush colors down his neck, along his chest and she spreads her legs open wider around his hips. Her heel digs into his ass as she tries to spur him on. He doesn’t give, instead choosing to bite at her throat. Kip fists a hand in his hair and pulls harshly. “Don’t,” she hisses. She doesn’t want any marks. No souvenirs from this left on her body. He mutters something unintelligible before he leans down, taking a nipple roughly in his mouth. Her back arches off the bed, her cunt smearing wet against his bare torso.</p><p class="p2">The flat of his hand holds her thigh open. He pulls his mouth off her nipple wetly and he rests his cheek there, panting against her breastbone, his hips grinding down against the sheets. He’s so easy, she thinks, like she’s anything but. As if he can hear her thoughts, he reaches his hand down between their bodies. His knuckles graze the seam of her, dripping over his hand. He barely parts her open, and she sucks in a harsh breath.</p><p class="p2">“I get you sloppy wet and you call me lazy,” he says, his voice lazy itself.</p><p class="p2">“Shut up,” she gasps. Her fingers are still in his hair and she starts to pull again. She gets an answering push of his fingers against her cunt and the the curl of one inside her. “Just fuck me already.”</p><p class="p2">Sam rolls over onto his back, a snide and expectant expression on his face. “Lazy,” she says to him, even as she straddles him, a hand braced against the center of his chest as the other grabs for his cock, positions him where she wants him most. No matter how many times they have done this—and she refuses to keep count—that first push of him into her always manages to overwhelm her. It’s not that he’s particularly large, it’s not that it hurts, but that the ache is something far more primal—hell, existential even. It’s an admission, that she is not only willing to let him in, but that she wants him.</p><p class="p2">He always appears to feel similar: now, his mouth has gone slack and it’s only when he’s in her to the hilt that he says her name.</p><p class="p2">Kip rides him, like she’s proving a point. And maybe she is. Sam keeps watching between her legs, his fingers brushing against where she is spread around him. She closes her eyes when he starts to thumb at her clit, no longer interested in looking at him.</p><p class="p2">He flips her onto her back after she comes, winded. His hands cup her face as he drives into her, and it’s overwhelmingly, stupid good. When he comes, he slumps down onto her, deadweight that pushes her into the mattress. She shoves at his shoulder and he flops over beside her. He drags the duvet over the both of them, his arm settling where it drops around her without a word. Kip tries to steady her breathing. She wishes they had shut the light off before they started. It’s never a problem, seeing what they do to each other—it’s the moments that stretch after. She knows, if she turns her head, she will see him. On the side of the bed that used to be her husband’s, his hair mussed against the pillow. She’ll smell him here tomorrow.</p><p class="p2">Kip turns her head. “You’ll be gone in the morning,” she says. “I don’t need my son—”</p><p class="p2">“Fucking Christ, Kip. I’m not trying to play picket fences and tidy houses here with you. Hell, I don’t even know your kid’s name.” His last sentence gets caught in a yawn.</p><p class="p2">“Do you want to know?”</p><p class="p2">The question, as quietly asked as it is, feels somewhat like ripping something vital open. The same feeling as crossing a line. That perilous terror when she would take off from the ground, launched up into the air. There is only so much a person can do mid-flight, only so many things to be done and arranged with the body. The rest is gravity. There is no control.</p><p class="p2">This feels a lot like that.</p><p class="p2">“Do you want me to know?”</p><p class="p2">Kip laughs, brief and nearly silent. She grins as she speaks. “Fuck you, you can never answer the question, can you? Can never give an inch.” She realizes as she says it, that’s not entirely true. He was the one who came here. He’s he one who brings her dinner. She never goes to him. He always comes to her. His chest feels over-warm against her back. Her skin is tacky with sweat and more she cares less to think about, drying sticky down the inside of her thighs.</p><p class="p2">When Sam exhales, she can all but taste his impatience with her. His active dislike. “What’s his fucking name then?”</p><p class="p2">It’s this that has become easily familiar to her. She’s gone from what she thought was a comfortable marriage, easy and kind, to something as spiky and ungovernable as this. We inherit the world we help build. Someone told her that once. Sam’s hand tightens on her hip. She tells him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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